Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Toyota And Lexus Vehicles Are Unsafe

All Toyota-produced vehicles sold in the U.S. today—including Toyota cars and trucks, and Lexus automobiles—are unsafe. It will take years before new models roll off the company’s assembly lines that are completely safe. Also, millions of Toyota vehicles are on American roads already that are unsafe to drive. Any recent-vintage Toyota product, model years 2002[2] and later, potentially can turn into a runaway vehicle at a moment’s notice. Driving one or being a passenger is like playing Russian roulette. Query whether Americans, especially young families with small children, will trust their lives to Toyota?

Tragically and irresponsibly, the company has lied for years and it is lying now. First, Toyota claimed it was a floor mat problem. Next, the problems were related to the accelerator pedal[3]; and on and on the company’s lies go. Toyota has had 10 years to investigate these issues, and determine and implement solutions, but its management has lied repeatedly and it is still doing it. The runaway vehicle safety problems, which are confronting the giant automaker, are of a magnitude equal to or greater than those that brought down the storied Firestone tire brand, and the same thing may happen to Toyota. Every American needs to read about runaway Toyota-produced vehicles. The facts are sobering.

After the sudden-acceleration problems surfaced in Toyota and Lexus vehicles, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said “more motorists have died in Toyota vehicles associated with sudden acceleration in the last decade than in cars made by all other manufacturers combined.”[4] Consumer advocate Ralph Nader’s trail-blazing and Herculean efforts helped launch the automobile safety movement. His speeches and writings on behalf of Americans (see, e.g., “Unsafe at Any Speed”) helped expose and remedy auto safety defects. Today he believes: “[The NHTSA] is a broken agency that has to be rebuilt.”[5]

The Los Angeles Times’ fine investigative reporters have been shining light into the dark recesses of Toyota—notwithstanding the company’s massive cover-up that has spanned a decade so far.[6]

Rather than attempt to distill the wisdom contained in the Times’ articles, the links to the most recent ones are set forth below. I encourage you to read them carefully now and in the future, especially if you are a current Toyota or Lexus owner, or someone who may be considering the purchase of such vehicles in the future. The life you save may be your own, or that of a friend or loved one, or even a total stranger who gets killed or injured by these vehicles.

These people were killed when an OUT-OF-CONTROL LEXUS crashed and burst into flames. Their last minutes were filled with TERRO.TOYOTA SETTLED WITH A CONFIDENTIALITY AGREEMENT FOR $10 MILLION. THAT'S WHAT A FAMILY IS WORTH TO TOYOTA!

The Times’ brilliant—and hopefully prize-winning—team members deserve enormous public praise and professional recognition by their peers for the courage and talent that they have exhibited consistently in ferreting out the facts and writing about these critical issues. The newspaper’s editors must be congratulated too, for having the guts to encourage and support the “Times Investigation.”

One can barely imagine the staggering political, financial and other pressures that are being applied by Toyota to its critics in the media, in government, and in the private sector, as the company perpetuates its lies and massive cover-up[7]—despite the risks to Americans each and every day.[8]